15-Year-Old Creates Genius App For Skimming Documents

Tanay Tandon, the
15-year-old creator of a new summarizing app called
Clipped.usc.edu

Tanay Tandon is only fifteen, but he recently released a
brilliant-sounding, patent-pending app for his high school debate
team called Clipped.

He should forget the debate team.

Once perfected, Clipped is an app the world will be excited to
get its hands on.

Clipped was released on December 29th during Tandon's winter
break. It uses technology to scan articles for the most important
information. Then it turns the articles into bullet points.

You can imagine how beneficial an auto bullet point generator
would be for students. It could eliminate the need to read text
books or buy highlighters altogether. It'd also be good for
anyone reading a lengthy article from a tablet or smart phone.

Unfortunately, the current version falls a little flat. It works
best for one to two page, information-packed articles. It's not
beneficial for opinion articles, but Tandon says he's working to
improve that.

Although it has a four-star rating in the App Store, it's
received mixed reviews.

"Disappointment abounds," one person wrote. "The predictive model
is interesting but it can be limiting. In the case of Clipped,
it's EXTRA limiting because it requires connecting to your own
Facebook or Twitter account."

Another wrote, "Interesting idea, first of a kind app. The home
screen gives a simple overview of the current news, so it is
quite easy to stay updated. The search bar is helpful because I
can find articles about whatever I want, and the news is up to
date. Overall, excellent app with a lot of potential."

To use Clipped, which is free in the App Store, you have to login
with either Twitter or Facebook. It doesn't pull in all articles
that are circulating in your feed, but the search bar works fine.
We were able to pull up specific Business Insider articles accurately in
no time at all.

The experience was just so-so. Clipped pulled the article into
three bullet points. Unfortunately it missed the main point of
the article, which was that there's heavy investor interest in
Chromatik. Instead, it pulled out information on the founder,
Matt Sandler, all taken from the first few paragraphs of the
two-page story.

Tandon knows his app has flaws, and he tells Fast Company he's working to fix them. After
all, it's still early and the 15-year-old is juggling a lot.

Tandon first wrote the algorithm for Clipped last year. He was
tired of sifting through evidence for his debate team, which took
a lot of time to consume. So he created a way to make the
articles more concise and easier to skim. He tells
Fast Company that he spent 3-4 hours working on Clipped after
school, and between 6 and 7 hours per day on it in the weeks
leading up to launch.

He's been so busy with Clipped, he hasn't had time to get his
Learner's Permit. "I haven’t started looking into that," he tells
Fast Company. "I probably should. This summer I’ll put some time
into that."